32 Quotes from Aaron Levie on Building for the Enterprise
From How to Start a Startup — Lecture 12
Published in
4 min readOct 31, 2014
From Stanford’s CS183B Course How to Start a Startup — Lecture 12
The quotes below are all 140 characters or less, so please feel free to share as you see fit. In case I’ve missed any quotes or you find any errors, please leave me a comment and I will be sure to update the post.
- “We didn’t really start the company to go build an enterprise software company.”
- 1/ “Always look for these changing technology factors- any market that has a significant change in the underlying raw materials…”
- 2/ “…or enabling factors, is an environment that is about to change in a very significant way.”
- “Everything about the enterprise, and then by definition the software the enterprise uses has changed — just in the last 5 years.”
- “If there could’ve ever been a magical time to build an enterprise software company, now is absolutely that time.”
- “The benefit to building a startup is that customers don’t have the same kind of friction when they adopt new technology.”
- “We’re going from a world of customized software to standardized platforms.”
- “The IT model of the enterprise has become a lot more user lead.”
- “In an IT lead world, incumbents generally win because they have the existing relationship with the IT organization.”
- “In a user lead model, users are bringing in their own technology… and you can build software then, around the user.”
- 1/ “They can bring the technology in, then you can sell to the enterprise when they want to have better control, better security…”
- 2/ “…you still have the same biz model as a traditional enterprise sw company, but the way to get into the company is through the end user”
- “Every single industry is going through a major business model and technology oriented disruption.”
- “Look for new enabling technologies that create a wide gap between how things have been done and how they can be done.”
- “Any time where the delta b/w what is possible and how things work today is at its widest, that’s an opportunity to go build new technology”
- 1/ “All we’re really doing is repeating technologies that were tried 10, 20, 30 years ago…”
- “…it’s just that it was too expensive, too unusable, and we didn’t have the enabling technologies to make it possible.”
- “In the enterprise you want to start intentionally small.”
- 1/ “You intentionally start small, because you will not be able to compete with an incumbent…”
- 2/ “…because the incumbent is always going to go for the full solution.”
- “Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a ‘toy’ you’re definitely onto something.”
- “Do things that incumbents can’t or won’t do because it’s economically or technically infeasible.”
- 1/ “You can look at the cost structure of an incumbent company and discover: where are they not going to be able to drop their prices…”
- 2/ “…because that business model is fundamental to the existence of the company.”
- “You want to find the really crazy but still somewhat reasonable outliers within the customer ecosystem.”
- “Go after the customers that are working in the future, but haven’t totally lost their minds.”
- 1/ “Listen to your customers, but don’t always build exactly what they’re telling you.”
- 2/ “This is a really key distinction around building enterprise software.”
- “Modularize, don’t customize. Build a platform as opposed to building all of the custom technology and custom vertical experiences.”
- “You can keep ‘consumer’ DNA at the center of your product. That will always mean that adoption is easier.”
- “Your product should sell itself, but that does not mean you don’t need salespeople.”
- “Read these 3 books — Crossing the Chasm, Innovators Dilemma and Behind the Cloud.”
You can watch the entire lecture for yourself here: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec12/
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Image Credit: Box.net CEO: Aaron Levie — By Robert Scoble
